The Silent Waves Are My Company
by KatInColor
Summary: And somewhere deep in her heart, she just knows Stefan was counting on that, on her, not to give up on him./ Missing moments, drabbles, shameless fluff,all that has its castle here. Stefan/Elena
1. Chapter 1

**Eventual Title: The silent waves are my company **

**Fandom: The Vampire Diaries**

**Pairing: Stefan/Elena**

**Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Romance**

**Wordcount: 1.408**

**Used Lyrics: The Wind by The Fray**

**A/N: So Guys, TVD isn't something I'm really into, but my sister is, so this goes to you, F-ontiptoes. Anyways, neither this amazing nor the TV-Show are mine, so credits go to the Fray (Check them out!) and The CW! Thanks for finding your way and enjoy!**

_Oh my God, I think I'm lost at sea_

_The silent waves are my company_

_And I lost the land between the sky and sea_

_And wondering, "Will the wind ever come for me?"_

Elena knows she's not alone. She knows there's Bonnie and Caroline, there's Rick and Matt and just in case she could still call Jeremy. She knows, there are lots of people looking out for her. She knows. Still, she can't help but feel _lonely, _well maybe not lonely, but _empty_. Like Stefan's leaving took all color of her world and now he's back, he's still holding it. She just wished he'd give it back.

"Elena?"

She looks up, startled, hair falling over her shoulders, giving her face free to the rest of the world as she sits on the window still in the library of the Salvatore mansion. She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear and pulls her knees up, Charles Dickens' '_David Copperfield'_ landing on the floor with a soft thud.

"Stefan."

He doesn't answer but walks over to her something strange, foreign in his eyes as he drops into one of the huge leather chairs standing nearby. He looks tired, she notices, thick dark rings building a crass contrast to his pale skin. His eyes are restlessly scanning the room, darting to another direction at even the tiniest sound. He takes deep, steady breathes, an old habit, something he usually does to reassure himself, his fingers tapping an irregular, rushed rhythm onto the armrest.

"What are doing here?" He asks, focusing on the fluttering of the silken curtains above her head, whispering long forgotten stories into the wind.

"Hiding." Elena says more to herself than to him, but she isn't keen enough to believe he wouldn't have heard her and at least she has his attention now, as he watches her with something calm and strangely familiar in his eyes.

"Damon's been looking for you." He finally says, his brows jumping up just a fraction, revealing hurt and something like defeat to her. Even after all this months she can still read him like an open book, she can feel him, all around her, like she can feel the golden letters stamped into the heavy leather binding of one of his beloved books. She doesn't miss a beat, though, because hurt isn't something she wants to find in those eyes. She wants to get lost and be found right there and then in these eyes. And defeat never dressed him well.

"I know."

He releases one long breath, a sigh almost, careful not form what she still hopes to hear one day again. _Forever._

"You don't wanna let him wait, right?" he asks, his voice shaking only the slightest bit, as he laughs a breathless laugh, his voice pitched a little higher than usual. _Cynicism doesn't dress him well either, she notes._ He stands up, claps his hands together and walks over to the opposite window, peeling the curtains away to get a glimpse whether the world is still turning or time stood still, as it always seems to when he's with her.

"Stefan." Elena calls, softly, coaxing. He doesn't react, but listens intently to whatever lies Damon is telling Caroline upstairs. Lies about him loving Elena, lies about really meaning it. The sad thing with Damon and his lies is that for him they aren't lies. And maybe they aren't lies at all. Maybe, Damon loves Elena and maybe he really only loves for herself, but no matter how selfish that might sound Stefan loves her more. He not only loves her, _needs_ her. He needs her to remind him of who he is, of who he _can_ be.

"Stefan." She repeats a little firmer this time. She can tell he isn't really there, though she can't tell where exactly he is. He turns around eyeing her again.

"What is it you want me to do, Elena?" He asks tiredly, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

"I don't want you to do anything." She replies, knitting her brows together, as she slowly approaches him, her steps echoing on the dark, wooden parquet. He turns around complete, arms crossed in front of his chest, eyes looking anywhere but at her. He takes a step back; she takes one forward and then the other way around again, like they'd be dancing a dance only they have the choreography for.

"What is it you want then?"

Elena laughs, a bitter, unhappy laugh at his words, as she shakes her head and he's backed away far enough to stand right against the window, trapped, exposed to her, completely exposed to soft words, to blinding smiles, to kisses that stole his breathe and to bittersweet memories flashing in front of his closed eyelids, no matter how bad he begged them to go away and leave him be as the beyond help mess he really is.

"You should know me better, Stefan." She has her head cocked to the side, her lips pulled into a sad smile, as she stops only a foot or two in front of him.

"I do." He answers, directly looking her in the eyes for the first time this evening and it takes her breathe away, takes all the air from her lunges at once and pulls the ground from her feet, because she can see _him_ again. There's no bitterness, no Ripper, no compulsion, nothing, only a silent plea for her to understand, to see that he just _can't._ Elena's not naïve enough to give up just like this, though. And somewhere deep in her heart, she just knows Stefan was counting on that, on her, not to give up on him. He takes a step closer on his own, the air wrapping around them like a blanket on cool days in fall after a heavy thunderstorm.

"Stefan, let go." She reaches out, carefully, as if he's a mile away, as if they're worlds apart, brushing her fingertips over his jawline. He sighs heavily, but catches her wrist in his hand anyways, bringing it down, but keeping it with him anyways, his thumb pressing lightly where her pulse throbs, feeling how it picks up speed at that little gesture.

"I'm trying, Elena. I promise, I do." She nods her head, ignoring the stinging pain in her chest and the way her eyes start burning.

"Will you let me know?" She asks, taking a stuttering breath, the air burning, hurting her lungs as the first stray tear seeks its way down her cheek. He takes a step closer, suffocating her with his presence, with his undeniable scent of old books and fresh grass, with memories aching to be forgotten, with just _him_. He brushes his thumb under her eyes, gathering all the tears to be shed, hanging in her lashes, before he cups her jaw and forces her to look at him.

"I promise." He mummers just before he leans down slowly, carefully and she can see him thinking, see him consider his options, as his breath fans across her lips.

"Please." It's not more than a breathe, formed to a word, he still he hears her and it doesn't take more than a second for him to lean down and press his lips softly to hers and It feels like home, and like flying and like fearlessness and just like _them_. He pulls back and exhales, shaking his head just slightly, his eyes glistening with moisture, that shouldn't be there if he really cared as less as he claimed to.

"Take care, Elena." He pleads, swallowing back all the bitterness, all the words hidden so carefully in the darkest corner of his mind, everything he could and would say if he just had any right to.

She nods like the good, brave girl; everybody wants her to be, like the big girl that learned growing up in nothing but the blink of an eye. Elena is just not sure if she wants to be brave, if she wants to be grown up so quick just because she has to be.

With one last smile, he's gone. And she knows she only has to wait. Elena's good waiting, she's patient and in years she'll still be patient, if he'd let her wait. That's okay, though. She can wait.

And if Caroline's right and there is something like destiny or serendipity as she likes to call, they're just ships sailing towards the unavoidable conclusion of all this craziness called life. She'd sail through sun and storm, through wind and weather if only he's there in the end. She knows it'll al be worth it in the end.

_I dreamed I found the shoreline_

_You're standing there_

_I dreamed I found you waiting._

_You were waiting for me, waiting for me._

_**Fin.**_

**So there you go sweet-hearts. What do you say? Nay or Yay? Top or Flop? Leave love, not only in the review section. **


	2. Love is a Losing Game

**A/N: Two older drabbles for you, both too short to post them on their, still they seemed to fit here. Quotes were the songs by the unbelievable Amy Winehouse and Nickelback .**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries or any of the characters neither are the songs mine.**

**Enjoy!**

**Love is a losing Game**

**Stefan/Elena **

**Drama/Romance**

**462 Words**

The first time Elena Gilbert falls in love, she's fourteen. He's two years older than her, he's football player and he's got ridiculously cute dimples. She only tells Caroline though, even though she knows her good enough to know she'd tease her 'till eternity. Bonnie would blankly stare at her, so Elena decides one confidant is enough. Caroline already went out with boys, well one boy, but still. To her own surprise Caroline doesn't tease her, but instead makes a big fuss about it. She makes Elena meet her after school, only to dial the poor boys number and then thrust the phone into Elena's hand. Elena, shocked enough with the fact that he picked up, only stammers some lousy excuse, hangs up and turns beet red. Caroline then rolls her eyes and tells her do watch and learn how it's _really_ done. She then calls him again and tells him how Elena actually didn't really care for him, but if he _really_ was _so_ keen on going out with her something could be arranged. Caroline hangs up, a smug smile on her lips. Well, long story short disguise, Elena has a date for Saturday and Caroline insists on doing her styling and hair _and_ of course make up. Looking back, Elena thinks she looked like a drag queen. She can't really recall any details; she just knows it went awful. And she doesn't even know his name anymore. Elena learns this evening one thing: Love is a losing game.

The second time Elena falls in love, it's Matt. Matt Donovan, her dear, kind Matt. It feels good being with him. Matt gives Elena her first kiss, her first real date and a bunch of other firsts, but that dream has a sudden end when Elena's parents die. Matt tries to be there for her but Elena just can't help but push him away and when Elena first tries to make a move towards him again, he's the one to push. Elena learns what it means to fall for someone fearlessly, what it means to be so in love it hurts. And in the end she learns what it truly means to hurt, in more than just on way. And again: Love is a losing game.

When Stefan comes to town, Elena's still busy healing, but somehow this boy, this undeniable, mysterious boy manages to catch her eye. Stefan shows Elena so many things. He shows her that it's okay to feel, that it's okay not be strong. He shows Elena how to cook and how to read, how to _really_ read, Shakespeare. The most important thing Elena learns from Stefan is how to truly love recklessly and without denial. Love might by a losing game, but this time Elena Gilbert won.

**How you remind me **

**Stefan/Elena**

**Angst/Romance**

**361**

She's his life line during the months he spends with Klaus. She's the first thing he thinks off in the morning and the last thing on his mind in the night. He tries to picture her in every thinkable situation, how beautiful she is when she laughs and how peaceful she is when she sleeps. He tries to remember her voice, tries to remember how it sounds, how it feels when she tells him she loves him. He can feel her laughter, as clear as a bell, vibrate through his whole body. It's like he can feel her even though she's miles away.

He feels like Klaus pulled the ground from under his feet when he forces him to stop feeling. It's like this dull, thudding pain after a punch directly in the face, just that the thudding doesn't stop. It's like his ears are roaring with noise, Klaus voice always repeating the same sentence over and over again. _Shut it off. Shut it off. Shut it off_. All over again, too loud, too often, too much. He just wants it to stop. He can't though. It's like he's trapped in his own body, like he'd only be remote-controlled. All he can think of is blood, Klaus, blood, hunger, _blood_, he's damn hungry for things, not only for blood. Elena produces Lexi out of air. They lock him up and Stefan knows he should feel guilty, he should feel ashamed in front of Lexi, who tried so hard to show him the right side. It's not that he doesn't want to, it's that he _can't_.

Stefan starts feeling, hearing, seeing, really seeing, her again, when she drops the bomb. She kissed Damon. Elena, _his_ Elena, kissed Damon. That's just wrong (_It's also wrong to call her his, but who counts?)_. It's not about the fact that Damon is his brother, but it's just such a screwed up picture. Elena is so pure, so innocent in her whole being, while Damon is bitter and jaundiced. It's such an abstract thought. Elena deserves to be happy and Stefan just doubts she'll ever be happy with Damon. That's the moment Stefan starts remembering again.

**A/N: Make my day, leave some nice words. Also prompts are well appreciated.**


	3. Till then My Windows ache

_**A/N: So I happen to love Pablo Neruda, especially Sonnet XVII, it's just breathtaking. So I decided to work this in a tiny little, mots random drabble.**_

_**Disclaimer: neither Stefan and Elena nor the works of Pablo Neruda are mine.**_

He writes her, before that fatal night in the gym. It's as random as he would've dropped her physics book into her mailbox. He didn't even knock, or ask her about it. She's a little startled when she finds the thin envelope with her name underlined on it. It's thin yellowish paper that rustles like tissue paper when she rubs it between thumb and pointer finger. It's obviously his neat, straight handwriting, thick dark ink blotches, breaking the straight lines of his writing. In the top right corner it says _'Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII'. _So these are _not_ his own words. She reads it anyway, after that long months without sign of him, she's glad for any shred he's kind enough to offer.

"_I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,  
>or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.<br>I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
>in secret, between the shadow and the soul.<em>

_I love you as the plant that never blooms  
>but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;<br>thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,  
>risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.<em>

_I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.  
>I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;<br>so I love you because I know no other way than this:_

_where I does not exist, nor you,  
>so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,<br>so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. "_

The single tear she sheds lands directly onto his initials, the letters becoming blurred and dissolve into different shades of blue. He's signed with_ 'all the love my dead heart is still able to bear, only you, forever'. _The poem might not be his, but the last part, those _twelvethirteenfourteen _words are definitely his, which means they apply. She's so happy she can't even say what and how much she's feeling in this one moment. She just knows he means it. She just knows. Stefan says stuff he doesn't mean and so he also wouldn't write it. Something dulls her happiness though. She has to write back, she has to let him, she's still waiting, still there, remaining on her picket, for him to come back. She sits through the whole night, she crumples up draft after draft, her own words sounding sappy and overemotional or just simply not like her to her ears. It's half past two in the morning when she finds the book Stefan gave her for Valentine's last year, while she's looking for new paper. _Pablo Neruda, 100 love sonnets. _She jumps through the pages and there in the middle of the book she finds it. There. Right there. At the bottom of the page. That's her letter, she just knows it's perfect. She writes it down, letters curvy, hand shaky. She ends her letter with _'with all that means, I'm waiting for, now and forever. Only you."_ And then jots her name underneath.

"_So I wait for you like a lonely house  
>till you will see me again and live in me.<br>Till then my windows ache."_

Elena tuckst he letter into the mailbox in front of the Salvatore mansion the next day and she just knows this might be a tiny step, but it's in the right direction. _(How could she have known things would start to fall apart so quickly?)_

_**A/N: We're through again. Leave love all around you, maybe in my review-section too! Love, Kat.**_


	4. Nostalgia

**A/N: This is for Fontiptoes birthday!**

Stefan was never someone to dwell in nostalgia. Sure he likes the past, Rockabilly in the fifties; Woodstock no twenty years later and _oh_, those horrible shoulder pads in the nineties, but Stefan also likes to think that, this moment, here and now is a gift, one of the most precious gifts to be made. It's not like he didn't try doing that, he just wasn't very successful with that. He accepted that nobody really dances Rockabilly anymore and that teenagers nowadays think Woodstock was just a huge excuse to smoke a lot of weed and have a lot of…_fun_. Also, people may still wear shoulder pads sometimes, but they still look absolutely horrible, well that's maybe something that hasn't changed all that much. When he first lays eyes on Elena and immediately feels drawn to her, he first thinks it's his long-lost sense for nostalgia all over again, but when he got to know her and all her facets he realizes his was just enough of an idiot to fall in love. He's reluctant at first because he's the monster parents tell their children stories about and he shouldn't fall in love, he shouldn't for the sake of _her_. She's precious and pure and just so many things he's not. He can't resist though, so he meets her and it feels, strangely good like it's totally normal. He's an idiot, he understands that now. He's gonna embrace it.

Elena gets his new favorite past-time, but not in the dirty kind of way, but in a deeper, intellectual kind of way. He likes to learn essential stuff about her like, that her favorite book is _'Pride and Prejudice'_ but she can't stand _'Emma'_, or how she's allergic to hornet venom, but also the little things like how she always has to same song set as her alarm in the morning (_Sittin', Waitin', Wishin'_ by Jack Johnsson) or that her favorite color for nail polish is something called _'Fuchsia Fusion'_. Sometimes they'd simply lie together and exchange secrets, like how she could never cry at the end of Titanic, while he did. After he's done learning about her, he learns reading her. She gets a little crease just above her nose when she gets upset, or how she looks down at her hands before she tells him something uncomfortable.

What he quickly learns about Elena is that she absolutely _loves_ everything that happened at least one decade before her birth. She listens to Bob Dylan while doing her homework; she tends a pair of powder-blue baby pumps she found at a thrift store like a treasure and she's really into that one retro breathed-on ice cream parlor they have in Mystic Falls. It's at the other end of the town, situated between what in earlier years was the town house and a record shop, it has polished, black and white tiles, red leather sitting booths and the whole stuff is dressed up. To be honest Stefan is never sure whether he landed in a life-time play of _Mary Poppins _or if he stumbled right into _Disney World._ You may have sensed it's not his favorite place to be, but Elena likes it so he'll gladly do that for her.

Right now he finds himself sitting on his bed, back leaning against his head board, Jean Paul Sartre in his hands. Elena lies next to him on her stomach, her long ended math's homework under her folded arms, chin resting atop her hands.

"I'm bored." She declares, pouting.

"Done with everything?" He asks, sending her quick smile. She rolls her eyes, sitting up abruptly.

"Yes, _dad_." She replies, batting her lashes "Is it okay if I snoop around a bit?"

"Sure."

She gets up and starts rummaging through his drawers, making comments about this and that and he soonly gets lost somewhere between poetry and prose, in the middle of the lines again.

"Oh" She exclaims, happily, catching his attention. He looks up to see her holding up an old record of his. It's Johnny Cash _'Folsom Prison Blues'. _He closes his book smiling slightly to himself.

"Can I ask you something?" He questions, still smiling, while she traces her fingers carefully, reverently over the vinyl. Elena looks up to meet his eyes, biting her bottom lip.

"Of course."

"Why are you that much into basically that happened before you were born? I should be that way." Stefan remarks, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Let me put it like that. Would you want to grow up in a generation that calls _Justin Bieber_ music?"

He frowns.

"Excuse me, who is Justin Bieber?"

"And that is exactly what I'm talking about." she tells him matter-of-factly, nodding confidently "But honestly, I don't get how can't like all that stuff after experiencing all that."

He sighs heavily.

"Sure I like Johnny Cash and The Great Gatsby." She scrunches up her nose "It's just this stuff doesn't last, so I'd rather not attach myself really to anything temporal."

"Oh, but that's unbelievable sad." She says lightly, leaning against his shoulder.

"You think so?" He presses a kiss to the top of her head.

"Mhm. You have nothing to go at if you wanna get away from what's happening currently." Elena explains, tracing her pointer finger over the back of his hand. He takes a moment to let her words settle in.

"I have you." He says after a while, laying his chin onto her shoulder.

"But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something surreal, something that helps you to get lost with yourself a bit." She insists, frowning a little.

"To me you're still a little surreal." He utters, shrugging, slightly. She doesn't look very convinced until her face lights up.

"You know what? I can be your nostalgia! I mean not me in person, but memories like that. Would that be good for you?" For an answer he kisses her.

Stefan once thought being nostalgic meant being idiot. He said it once and he'll say it twice. He's an idiot. He'll embrace it.

**A/N: Leave me a nice word maybe?**


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